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I think you guys are intentionally closing your eyes to the bigger picture and what farv was saying.
If 20% of Republicans utilized early voting compared to 40% of Democrats, and Rick Scott, fully informed on this issue, decided to cut down early voting while not compensating in manpower, what does that tell you? It tells you that 1) Democrats (poor minorities) will be affected much more and 2) Republicans have more to gain from disenfranchising early voters even if it means stumping some of their votes in the end (and this means everything in the world in a swing state).
Now I'm not sure of the overall numbers of course but that is the argument. You're deceiving yourself by merely saying, "Oh, it affects all voters!" because while it does, the burden falls unevenly on the poor minorities and that, good sir, is the major issue.
I think we can all agree that nobody wants anyone to be disenfranchised. But I have to point out that your assumption above is actually not true this time around. While historically (and particularly in 2008) early voting has had a democrat majority so far in this election early voting has actually seen a reversal towards republican majority. This would make your assumption that it negatively effects democrats more than republicans and by extension low income populations, untrue.
This also doesn't bode well for the Obama campaign as it appears that actual voter turnout is stronger this time around for republicans than democrats. At least much stronger than it was in 2008 which had a 7 point lead for democrats in voter turnout.
Another observation based upon this change:
The most recent CNN pole which over-samples democrats by 11 points has Romney and Obama tied at 49%. This is based upon an assumed voter turnout which for some reason CNN thinks will be even higher this year than in 2008 for Democrats. I have the feeling that this election won't be as close as all the poles are indicating based upon poor voter enthusiasm and turnout assumptions. Whether you like it or not it's not looking great for Obama right now. If early voter turnout is any kind of indicator of the future than the 11 benefit given to Obama disappears and we'll see a strong Romney victory that won't be as close as predicted by the media.
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On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black.
The whole idea of direct democracy is this, correct. Democracy in every incarnation I am familiar with, has had some sort of qualifier for participation.
Male, and landowner come to mind as the most prominent of said qualifiers; the latter I had always read, was to indicate that you were capable of running an estate (at least in the Greek incarnation). This was to mean you had achieved and demonstrated faculties allowing you to rise above common people and could contribute to a political discussion in an intelligent (and virtuous if you are of Aristotelian ilk) and effective manner.
Democracy today means everyone, at least in some sense, but the founding fathers of that system (and indeed the US system) had no intention to let those they deemed unqualified participate.
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On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!"
Can you prove this? What I'm getting at is the possibility that our framework of representative democracy might implicitly require a degree of "uninformedness" in its provision of voting rights. It is indeed always a good idea to encourage learning and the pursuit of knowledge, but perhaps an abstention on the part of government when it comes to determinations of voting "fitness" is an integral part of our system.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i don't think it's agreed that nobody wants to disenfranchise anyone. it is the very contention
the problem is not a jim crow level of charge of blatant oppression. it's a more statistics based argument of procedural voter turnout manipulation
there is a default favoring for broader and easier access
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On November 06 2012 05:31 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:24 Innovation wrote:The problem with the test theory should be obvious. Say we accept the premise that the 'stupid votes' dilute the impact of the 'knowledgeable votes' and institute a test to disqualify the stupid votes, say 20% of the total. Great, now we've excluded those who can't dress themselves. But there is a still a range of different levels of knowledge within the remaining voters with Obama at the top with the most detailed knowledge of his own record of anyone and flat tax advocates at the bottom. Those 'stupid votes' are still here, the guys voting aren't as stupid as the first time we ran the filter through but there is still a range of opinions of varying idiocy. So we make the test harder and exclude another 20% (20% of the remaining 80% so the electorate is now the 64% most informed). But we still have some people who couldn't tell you an approximation of the dictionary definition of socialist in this group and yet still try and use the word so we take another 20% out because those guys clearly shouldn't be allowed to make any kind of decision (20% of the remaining 64% so we're now down to 51.2% voters). Rinse and repeat.
If you accept the premise that the least informed shouldn't be voting then you either have a nonsensical argument about how a certain amount of idiocy is acceptable or you go to the logical conclusion, that how informed people are is fundamentally a relative concept and that in any group there will always be a least informed portion until you get to the single most informed person in a group of one. Once at this conclusion you proclaim an oligarchy and be done with democracy. Why must you take a logical and valid debate and throw in clearly biased and uninformed statements about Obama voters being smart and conservative voters being idiots? It's really offensive to the other side which includes millions of very smart and very successful people. Romney is going to bet his net worth on himself and quadruple it and then use it to offset some of the deficit. He couldn't tell anyone his plan to do this because then nobody would bet on Obama and it wouldn't have worked. He really did have a secret plan to run a balanced budget. What???? Why are you so upset? I was defending your right to vote.
Lol well played sir.
I'm going to vote for who i believe is the best candidate, and i encourage all of you to do the same.
"Vote, retain your right to complain"
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United States42655 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!"
It depends what you think democracy is for. I would argue that electing competent individuals to deal with problems in rational ways is a secondary objective of the system.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:45 Innovation wrote:Show nested quote +I think you guys are intentionally closing your eyes to the bigger picture and what farv was saying.
If 20% of Republicans utilized early voting compared to 40% of Democrats, and Rick Scott, fully informed on this issue, decided to cut down early voting while not compensating in manpower, what does that tell you? It tells you that 1) Democrats (poor minorities) will be affected much more and 2) Republicans have more to gain from disenfranchising early voters even if it means stumping some of their votes in the end (and this means everything in the world in a swing state).
Now I'm not sure of the overall numbers of course but that is the argument. You're deceiving yourself by merely saying, "Oh, it affects all voters!" because while it does, the burden falls unevenly on the poor minorities and that, good sir, is the major issue. I think we can all agree that nobody wants anyone to be disenfranchised. But I have to point out that your assumption above is actually not true this time around. While historically (and particularly in 2008) early voting has had a democrat majority so far in this election early voting has actually seen a reversal towards republican majority. This would make your assumption that it negatively effects democrats more than republicans and by extension low income populations, untrue. This also doesn't bode well for the Obama campaign as it appears that actual voter turnout is stronger this time around for republicans than democrats. At least much stronger than it was in 2008 which had a 7 point lead for democrats in voter turnout. Another observation based upon this change: The most recent CNN pole which over-samples democrats by 11 points has Romney and Obama tied at 49%. This is based upon an assumed voter turnout which for some reason CNN thinks will be even higher this year than in 2008 for Democrats. I have the feeling that this election won't be as close as all the poles are indicating based upon poor voter enthusiasm and turnout assumptions. Whether you like it or not it's not looking great for Obama right now. If early voter turnout is any kind of indicator of the future than the 11 benefit given to Obama disappears and we'll see a strong Romney victory that won't be as close as predicted by the media.
It would help if you had data to back up your assumptions. All current indicators lead to Democratic (poor minority) voters in the state of Florida being significantly more affected than Republican voters.
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On November 06 2012 04:59 Vorenius wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 04:36 KwarK wrote:
If you accept the premise that the least informed shouldn't be voting then you either have a nonsensical argument about how a certain amount of idiocy is acceptable or you go to the logical conclusion, that how informed people are is fundamentally a relative concept and that in any group there will always be a least informed portion until you get to the single most informed person in a group of one. Once at this conclusion you proclaim an oligarchy and be done with democracy. In every western country, including USA, minors aren't allowed to vote. I'd say that the reason was that they are less informed. (I'm not advocating a test before you can vote, simply pointing out that your logic makes little sense  )
It's so that they can't be politically levered while they're dependents.
On November 06 2012 05:31 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:24 Innovation wrote:The problem with the test theory should be obvious. Say we accept the premise that the 'stupid votes' dilute the impact of the 'knowledgeable votes' and institute a test to disqualify the stupid votes, say 20% of the total. Great, now we've excluded those who can't dress themselves. But there is a still a range of different levels of knowledge within the remaining voters with Obama at the top with the most detailed knowledge of his own record of anyone and flat tax advocates at the bottom. Those 'stupid votes' are still here, the guys voting aren't as stupid as the first time we ran the filter through but there is still a range of opinions of varying idiocy. So we make the test harder and exclude another 20% (20% of the remaining 80% so the electorate is now the 64% most informed). But we still have some people who couldn't tell you an approximation of the dictionary definition of socialist in this group and yet still try and use the word so we take another 20% out because those guys clearly shouldn't be allowed to make any kind of decision (20% of the remaining 64% so we're now down to 51.2% voters). Rinse and repeat.
If you accept the premise that the least informed shouldn't be voting then you either have a nonsensical argument about how a certain amount of idiocy is acceptable or you go to the logical conclusion, that how informed people are is fundamentally a relative concept and that in any group there will always be a least informed portion until you get to the single most informed person in a group of one. Once at this conclusion you proclaim an oligarchy and be done with democracy. Why must you take a logical and valid debate and throw in clearly biased and uninformed statements about Obama voters being smart and conservative voters being idiots? It's really offensive to the other side which includes millions of very smart and very successful people. Romney is going to bet his net worth on himself and quadruple it and then use it to offset some of the deficit. He couldn't tell anyone his plan to do this because then nobody would bet on Obama and it wouldn't have worked. He really did have a secret plan to run a balanced budget. What???? Why are you so upset? I was defending your right to vote.
LOL
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On November 06 2012 05:49 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:32 Souma wrote:
Lol, KwarK, so snarky. I love it. KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!" It depends what you think democracy is for. I would argue that electing competent individuals to deal with problems in rational ways is a secondary objective of the system.
And the primary?
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Why are you so upset? I was defending your right to vote.
Funny, but obvious you don't actually plan to have a reasoned debate rather than just insult those you disagree with.
When one can't actually debate ideas the typical response is to just insult the other side. Witty quips aside, good luck tomorrow.
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On November 06 2012 05:54 Innovation wrote:Funny, but obvious you don't actually plan to have a reasoned debate rather than just insult those you disagree with. When one can't actually debate ideas the typical response is to just insult the other side. Witty quips aside, good luck tomorrow.
Fucking bogus if you ask me.
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United States42655 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:53 NeMeSiS3 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:49 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:32 Souma wrote:
Lol, KwarK, so snarky. I love it. KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!" It depends what you think democracy is for. I would argue that electing competent individuals to deal with problems in rational ways is a secondary objective of the system. And the primary?
Keeping people from rioting. One of the many concessions society makes to keep things running for the common good.
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United States42655 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:54 Innovation wrote:Funny, but obvious you don't actually plan to have a reasoned debate rather than just insult those you disagree with. When one can't actually debate ideas the typical response is to just insult the other side. Witty quips aside, good luck tomorrow.
I'm reasonably sure I just laid out a coherent argument about why attaching qualifiers to the right to vote is a bad idea. All you did was got upset about it.
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United States13896 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:54 Innovation wrote:Funny, but obvious you don't actually plan to have a reasoned debate rather than just insult those you disagree with. When one can't actually debate ideas the typical response is to just insult the other side. Witty quips aside, good luck tomorrow.
Dude, go re-read his original comment. He isn't attacking conservatives or bolstering liberals. He said: A) The President is the most informed voter concerning the Presidential election because he's the President. He knows the office and has been swimming in these issues for the last 4 years. B) Proponents of a flat tax system are on the lower range of informed voters concerning tax reform. There are very few governments around the world that have anything that could be considered a flat tax. The contingent of countries that do is mostly comprised of countries of the former Soviet Union. A flat tax system within the context of Western Democracy is not embraced by either party, though outlying members of each may hold that belief.
The other part of Kwark's posts that you jumped on was an obvious joke that appeared to fly right over your head, which left you vulnerable to a humorous retort.
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On November 06 2012 05:57 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:53 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:49 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:32 Souma wrote:
Lol, KwarK, so snarky. I love it. KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!" It depends what you think democracy is for. I would argue that electing competent individuals to deal with problems in rational ways is a secondary objective of the system. And the primary? Keeping people from rioting. One of the many concessions society makes to keep things running for the common good.
Wouldnt the secondary by nature negate the primary?
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United States42655 Posts
On November 06 2012 06:14 NeMeSiS3 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 05:57 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2012 05:53 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:49 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2012 05:36 NeMeSiS3 wrote:On November 06 2012 05:32 Souma wrote:
Lol, KwarK, so snarky. I love it. KwarKs banned so many users, or at least that's what I've noticed, for acting the same way that I think it's mildly ironic to say the least. Didn't know we could so actively insinuate users are idiots/ignorant so hastily. In fact my last ban was just for using the word "idiot" to much, I suppose insinuation is acceptable practice and I'll move onto that. Oh and yeah : D glad someone got the bogus reference even though its rather new news. On November 06 2012 05:35 HunterX11 wrote:On November 06 2012 03:51 jdsowa wrote:On November 06 2012 03:43 MVega wrote:
So glad the election will be over soon. This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting.
We really need a voting system like Australia has where voting is mandatory and if you don't vote there is some sort of fine. At least that's how I remember Australian voting being, it's been quite awhile. I'd gladly pay the fine for not voting this election, I think as long as the money from that fine went into helping any one of my countrymen it would be worth a lot more than my vote.
Edit: I'll just add this ... The candidates running for president don't take this as seriously as some of the voters do. If either candidate believed that the other guy was as evil/horrible/whatever as all the attack ads and spin claimed, if either candidate believed that the other candidate was going to run the country into the ground ... They wouldn't have been joking and laughing and chummy together after the debates. Since they were that either means they both, while wanting the job, think that the other guy is capable OR they're both equally bad. That's a terrible idea. We should be valuing quality votes--people who bothered to give a damn about the candidates and the issues. As it is, we have this culture where we encourage people to vote regardless of their level of ignorance. You might personally consider yourself morally superior to ignorant people, but it doesn't automatically follow from that that you should have greater political representation than ignorant people. The whole idea of democracy that the people voice their own interests, be they rich or poor, ignorant or informed, white or black. Just because you have a system, doesn't mean it shouldn't be logically reformed. This is why creationism isn't allowed in any modern classroom because it is, to loosely quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, a neverending hole of ignorance. Same applies, why let people vote if all they've heard or cared to hear was "he's republican/democrat" . seems kinda against the whole idea of a democratic election, isn't the idea to remain informed and have a say, not blindly say "left or right!" It depends what you think democracy is for. I would argue that electing competent individuals to deal with problems in rational ways is a secondary objective of the system. And the primary? Keeping people from rioting. One of the many concessions society makes to keep things running for the common good. Wouldnt the secondary by nature negate the primary?
No, because a lot of people are idiots and life isn't especially fair. You need to convince enough of them both that they deserve their lot and that they have a degree of control in their lives to keep things running. An oligarchy, even if run more efficiently than a democracy, would fail to convince those it fucked over that it's okay to fuck them over.
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I'm reasonably sure I just laid out a coherent argument about why attaching qualifiers to the right to vote is a bad idea. All you did was got upset about it.
Read my response. Nowhere did I say that I was upset about the idea that qualifiers is a bad idea. I actually agree with you that testing is a bad idea. I take offense at your need to insult people as a core part of your argument.
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I just want to thank all of the people who have posted in this thread. Some have fallen off in the twelve hundred pages of this thread, and others have been forcibly removed. However, its been a great ride. After venturing to the comments sections of many websites, I have truly come to appreciate the level of discourse here-- sure its not amazing, but its a lot higher than you'd find anywhere else on the internet. A special shout out to the mods (hi Kwark!) who enforce that level, as well as to the many TL'ers who contribute.
We might not always agree and we get pretty heated, but that's alright. Even though we don't agree with xDaunt, we can more or less respectfully shit on his ideas and he'll do it right back. Thanks to him and a few others like BluePanther, kmillz and jd, this thread is not simply the world's biggest online liberal circlejerk. I also want to thank our international friends (especially the Canadians) like Nemesis, Souma and Defacer. of course, to all the dirty commies in this thread as well like farvacola, samzdat, and anyone who I have forgotten.
Finally, I'd like to hold a moment of silence for Swazi Spring and his brethren who must follow the election in RL instead of TL.
So yeah. Election Day is tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun tracking the debates (except the first one, that was painful), watching the primaries, the conventions and debating a bunch of issues. It all ends tomorrow.
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I just want to thank all of the people who have posted in this thread. Some have fallen off in the twelve hundred pages of this thread, and others have been forcibly removed. However, its been a great ride. After venturing to the comments sections of many websites, I have truly come to appreciate the level of discourse here-- sure its not amazing, but its a lot higher than you'd find anywhere else on the internet. A special shout out to the mods (hi Kwark!) who enforce that level, as well as to the many TL'ers who contribute.
100% agree. No matter how bad it seems like it gets on TL if you've read any other political forums or comment sections it's downright scary how crazy it is. Whether I agree with you or not, its always an interesting debate here with higher than average levels of discourse. GL HF GG.
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Australia8532 Posts
On November 06 2012 05:45 Innovation wrote:Show nested quote +I think you guys are intentionally closing your eyes to the bigger picture and what farv was saying.
If 20% of Republicans utilized early voting compared to 40% of Democrats, and Rick Scott, fully informed on this issue, decided to cut down early voting while not compensating in manpower, what does that tell you? It tells you that 1) Democrats (poor minorities) will be affected much more and 2) Republicans have more to gain from disenfranchising early voters even if it means stumping some of their votes in the end (and this means everything in the world in a swing state).
Now I'm not sure of the overall numbers of course but that is the argument. You're deceiving yourself by merely saying, "Oh, it affects all voters!" because while it does, the burden falls unevenly on the poor minorities and that, good sir, is the major issue. I think we can all agree that nobody wants anyone to be disenfranchised. But I have to point out that your assumption above is actually not true this time around. While historically (and particularly in 2008) early voting has had a democrat majority so far in this election early voting has actually seen a reversal towards republican majority. This would make your assumption that it negatively effects democrats more than republicans and by extension low income populations, untrue. This also doesn't bode well for the Obama campaign as it appears that actual voter turnout is stronger this time around for republicans than democrats. At least much stronger than it was in 2008 which had a 7 point lead for democrats in voter turnout. Another observation based upon this change: The most recent CNN pole which over-samples democrats by 11 points has Romney and Obama tied at 49%. This is based upon an assumed voter turnout which for some reason CNN thinks will be even higher this year than in 2008 for Democrats. I have the feeling that this election won't be as close as all the poles are indicating based upon poor voter enthusiasm and turnout assumptions. Whether you like it or not it's not looking great for Obama right now. If early voter turnout is any kind of indicator of the future than the 11 benefit given to Obama disappears and we'll see a strong Romney victory that won't be as close as predicted by the media.
Can you prove that bolded part, particularly in relation to Florida where the controversy is happening?
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EPT
